


No Surprises

by nayanroo



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Babies for Everyone, F/M, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sif finds out she is pregnant with twins.  Loki takes it <i>extremely</i> well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Surprises

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted by one of my followers on Tumblr and it just kind of was too cute to pass up. The prompt was:
> 
> Sif is pregnant and it's twin boys. Loki struts so hard he hurts himself. The Avengers/Asgardians are all bemused in their own ways.
> 
> I tried to figure out if I was writing post-canon or AU and finally just gave up, you can all take it however you want. The important part is babies.

“There you are, Sif.” 

Eir smiled kindly as Sif shed her cloak and, with a slight grimace, accepted the use of a carved wooden stool to help herself up onto the table. Not so many months ago she could have easily sprung up – Stars, even a month and a half ago she probably could have – but not anymore. It did feel nice to lie down, though, probably because her body wasn’t responsible for holding itself up. She smoothed a hand over her tunic, across the swelling of her belly, and then lay still as she Soul Forge lit up above her.

“How are you feeling?” the Healer asked, moving some of the diagnostic screens aside for the moment. “You certainly look very healthy.”

“I feel large.”

“You certainly do look bigger than usual for how far along you are, but well, we cannot pretend the father is exactly small himself. Lift your tunic, please.” Eir pressed her hands to Sif’s abdomen, cool fingers gentle and lips pursed slightly. “You are both tall, though, and you are very strong – I hear you have been keeping fit?”

There was a certain sharpness in Eir’s tone, and Sif squirmed a little. Her holographic projection did the same. “I do not spar anymore, if that is what you ask about. Walks, Lady Eir. I fear with this—“ she indicated her belly “—preceding me everywhere I go, I cannot partake of my usual activities.” _Though I do get exercise in other ways,_ she thought, and suppressed a satisfied smirk. Apart from the annoying sickness, pregnancy had brought with it great…sensitivity. She could not be faulted for taking advantage.

“Good.” Eir moved the diagnostic screens back into position. “Do try and swim too, Lady Sif. Certainly you can convince your husband to accompany you there.”

“Indeed, Lady Eir, I find it difficult to convince him to let me be alone for five minutes.” Sif stilled herself again and sighed. Loki had become extremely _attentive_ in the five months of her pregnancy thus far, and though she did adore him, it was extremely wearing. Though in the water, she was much more buoyant. It would be a relief to… Sif’s thoughts were derailed by Eir making a small surprised noise. When she did not immediately explain, Sif tilted her head to look at the projection of herself. Her eyes widened slightly.

“What,” she said quietly, “Is _that?_ ”

“Those,” Eir corrected gently, “Are the hearts of your children.”

“Plural.”

“Yes, plural.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed.” Eir raised an eyebrow. “No wonder you grow so large so soon.”

“Twins,” Sif breathed, and felt surprise and joy suffuse through her body. Oh, she was going to have _fun_ telling Loki about this.

Sure enough, when she cornered her slippery husband on the terraces of their chambers and told him, he promptly sat back down very heavily onto the cushioned chaise he’d magicked into being to lounge upon.

“Twins?” he asked faintly, staring at her stomach as though he’d never seen it before.

“Twin sons. That is what I said.” Sif put her weight on the other foot, one hand pressed into her side. Faintly beneath her fingertips she could feel a tiny heartbeat, fluttering and small, and eased up the pressure so she could stroke the spot. “We had best prepare ourselves.”

“I…”

At that moment, a very wide, very toothy grin split Loki’s face, and Sif felt her stomach drop. _Oh. Oh, this was not an expected response._

“I have fathered twin sons,” Loki murmured, the grin growing to be roughly the width of his face as he rose again, reaching for her, kissing her hungrily when his long fingers had made her pliant.

When they finally broke apart, Sif could still taste his utter glee on her tongue, and her own hands shifted restlessly against the tarnished gold metal upon his coat. “I take it you are pleased by this news,” she panted. Loki’s hands, damn them, were already working their way under her tunic.

“Oh, very,” he purred. “I think it speaks to quite a lot, don’t you, Sif?”

“Don’t you dare make this about your _prowess,_ ” but it was exactly that prowess that was making her fingers stop moving and start grabbing at his clothing to haul him off to bed. She had just enough time to reflect that this was likely how she ended up in this position in the first place.

*

If she had been a different woman or Loki a different man, Sif would have thought the gloating would stop once the reality of impending fatherhood of _two_ small terrors had set in. But Sif knew her husband better than that, and indeed he did not disappoint her, instead soaring to new heights of superciliousness with every passing week. Betimes she wondered if her belly and Loki’s ego were racing each other to see which would burst first from sheer pressure.

“Perhaps you would be a little less _enthusiastic_ if our positions were reversed for an hour,” she grumbled as they made their very slow, painful way down a staircase. These were the worst parts of Sif’s day. Most of the time she had other, magical means of going between levels in the palace, simply because their bedchamber and the day-to-day active parts of the palace were separated by so much distance and there was _no way_ she could waddle up and down all the way at seven months pregnant. There were however places in the palace where such contraptions were not practical, and this particular hallway was one of them. She gripped Loki’s arm rather more tightly than was necessary, though this particular staircase had no banister and the only things to hang onto otherwise were gold statues spaced several paces apart.

“You’re glowing with good health,” Loki said. “Infants are not that large. How hard can it be?” When he caught Sif glaring at him, he spread his free hand to the side. “What?”

“If you know what is good for you, you will not be serious about that question. I might be the size of a small whale, but I can still put a knife in you before you can blink.”

“You are a very attractive whale.”

“Perhaps it not a knife I need, but a shovel, so you can more easily dig that hole you are in.”

“Sif,” and at his tone she sighed and laid her other hand upon his arm in a rather more light and affectionate touch, and he covered it with his own. “I am many unsavory things, but unappreciative of the fact you consented to have children with me is not one of them.”

“Well… good.”

“But if you expect me to stop being insufferable to others over the fact that you are having twin sons, you _do_ expect too much.”

Sif did not need to voice her retort, as Loki promptly walked into a statue.

*

Sif pressed her hands into the small of her back as she stood beside Loki’s bed in the Healing Room. She’d have crossed them, but felt that the action would have jostled her tender breasts. And with how large her stomach was at this point, her arms would have ended up under her chin, which was a posture Volstagg could pull off but which Sif doubted would have quite the same effect coming from her.

“So you fell off the terrace,” she said slowly, “Because you were not looking where you were going. And you ended up—“

“In a flowerbed, yes.” Loki sounded petulant, but didn’t _look_ petulant at all. “Can we move on?”

“No, I want to savor the moment. You fell several stories into a flowerbed because you weren’t looking where you were going, as you were too busy talking—“

“—not an unexpected thing for me to be doing—“

“—to Volstagg and Hogun about how you would soon be father to twin sons, and—“ here Sif’s lips twitched, betraying her “—wasn’t that evidence of your superior virility since not even Volstagg has managed _that_ , and in the process of saying all this, you managed to forget you were walking straight to a ledge and fell. Into one of your mother’s flowerbeds.”

“Which I intend to restore to its original glory.”

Sif locked eyes with Volstagg, who was barely managing to contain himself. Her lips twitched again, though she gave him a quelling look. As much as she appreciated her friends’ attempts to knock her husband’s inflated ego down a notch (or ten), she would rather not have to visit the Healing Rooms to see him. She was already here often enough.

“As you should,” she told Loki. “You are quite lucky you did not do any lasting damage to yourself.”

“Fear not, lovely Sif,” and Loki’s fingers trailed over the curve of her stomach; as if in response, one of the boys shifted within her and kicked. Loki felt it, and the next stroke was with his palm, soothing. “I know I only have a month left to be utterly reckless.”

“I do not want you to be reckless _now_.” She relented to the ache in her feet and back and sat beside him, leaning back against the pillows. “I hate admitting this, Loki, but I am… apprehensive. Perhaps scared, even.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Volstagg stop snickering into his beard as Hogun elbowed him out of the room and closed the door behind both of them. Sif made a mental note to find them and thank them later… or at least to send a note thanking them, because she was not going to climb up and down the palace searching them out. Loki, though, seemed to sense her mood and put his own sense of self-importance away for the moment, hand sliding thoughtfully over her abdomen. It felt good, and Sif closed her eyes, relishing his touch.

“I have seen you march bravely into the face of monsters,” he said. “And though I do not doubt you were frightened then too, you did not let it consume you.” 

A thought occurred to Sif then, but she kept it to herself for the moment, sighing in pleasure as her husband’s clever fingers worked at the knots her back had tied itself in, and then sighed again when his lips brushed her throat, her jaw, her mouth. As silly as it was, she had not quite been able to believe that she was attractive still, though these small affectionate gestures of his helped her to think that he believed it, at least.

“I rather think that having children is different than marching into a cave of goblins.”

“But it is still the unknown. After all, you had no idea those goblins were in there, but it still turned out poorly for them.”

“Hmm.” Sif moved a little so they could get resettled, being mindful of Loki’s still-mending bones that needed to remain fairly still so they could repair. “There is no shame in fear, only in cowardice. You need no pretend to be unafraid around me, Loki. Though I obviously cannot stop you from bragging to fool everyone else.”

Loki huffed in annoyance but his fingers crept down and laced with hers, and Sif smiled. He was not the only perceptive one in Asgard.

*

A month and a half later, Sif was roused out of her doze by a gentle touch to her hair, followed by lips brushing over her ear and down her cheek. She inhaled, then stretched carefully so that she did not rouse the two-week-old infant swaddled and held against her.

“I… forgive me,” she whispered, looking down at Vali and tucking the blanket a little more closely around him, though it was all an excuse to brush her finger against one tiny hand. “The lullabye was meant for him, but it seems to have worked quite well on me, too. Oh—you wake anyway, did you have your fill, little one?”

Vali’s fists waved in the air and Sif smiled down at him. There had been many who said that she would not be a fit mother, that her chosen life of sword and shield had removed all softness and tenderness from her. But now, looking down at one of her beautiful sons, she dared them to prove her wrong. What else was this warm glow in her breast but the wealth of love their family had for each other?

“Greedy little things. They monopolize your breasts and leave nothing for me.” But Loki had an expression on his face that Sif had thought never to see – had indeed betimes wondered if his muscles, startled by the sudden change from scowling and disdain, would seize up and keep it like that. She rose and shifted Vali into his father’s arms, watching Loki soothe the infant back to sleep as she adjusted the shoulder of her gown. She would never, ever tire of seeing him with them.

Loki carefully laid Vali down next to his brother, and Sif leaned against his shoulder as he drew up their warm golden blankets, each one embroidered with the runes of their name and spells of protection and comfort. He stroked Narfi’s cheek before turning most of his attention to Sif.

“Another day of survival, another victory,” he breathed into her hair. “We may almost have a good grasp on this.”

“Oh, do not say that, for it means that tomorrow will bring something new and utterly bizarre.”

“They already have my penchant for mischief then.” Loki beamed down at his sons. “They will grow into unholy terrors and Asgard will never be the same.” He paused, perhaps gauging the amount of trouble he was currently in. “But perhaps they will also have some of your sensible nature, and that will serve them in better stead, I should think.”

“I _know_ it will.” Sif poked him in the ribs, but smiled as he reached over and waved his hand over the activation switch on the gift Thor and Jane had sent along to them. A glowing depiction of Yggdrasil blossomed in the center of the room, its branches arching out over the crib and filling every corner with golden light. It was, she thought, as good a nightlight as any, and she liked the idea of the World’s Tree watching over their children as they slept.

The fire in the common room had been banked for the night and the room was dim when they crossed it. Loki slipped an arm around her waist, and seemed loath to let her go as they prepared themselves for bed. He leaned over and pressed kisses to her shoulders when she took off her tunic, and pressed against her in bed, his hands wandering but not in an attempt to arouse.

“What’s gotten into you,” Sif mused aloud, stroking his hair as he pressed his face to her stomach. The incision that had been made between her hipbones was only a pearly scar by now. She could have had it vanished entirely, but Sif rather liked it.

Loki was silent for a long time before he stretched up, curling himself around her like one of his snakes. When he spoke, he was very quiet, almost wondrous. “I think, for the first time in a very long time, I am content.”

He drew a breath as though to continue, but buried his face in her hair instead, and Sif smiled as she turned her face into his shoulder and closed her eyes.


End file.
